Future Authoring Program PDF

Preview

Summary

Download Future Authoring Program PDF

Description

FUTURE AUTHORING PROGRAM GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS 1 The full future authoring exercise has 2 different stages, each with a number of steps In Stage 1, you will write generally about your goals. In Stage 2, you will specify and clarify the nature of those goals, and begin to strategize. We recommend that you complete the process over two or more separate days. People who allow themselves some time to sleep when they are making important decisions appear to do a better job and to benefit more. The entire exercise will require approximately two and a half hours. On the first day, you might want to complete Stage 1. On the second day, you could complete Stage 2. You will need to concentrate and process what you are writing, so try to complete this exercise when you are feeling alert and relatively unrushed. Simply follow the on-screen instructions as you go along. Press the “Next” button to move onto the next screen. If you need to take a short break or two of 5-10 minutes to get up and walk around during the process, please feel free to do so. You will be asked to write down your private thoughts and feelings. Please type them directly into the box provided. At times, you may be asked to write non-stop, without regard for grammar or spelling. At other times, you may be asked to revise what you have written. This exercise is meant to benefit YOU personally. Everything you write will remain accessible only to you and those you designate as recipients. The report you produce will summarize your personal goals and strategies. You and your recipients, if any, will be emailed a copy of this report shortly after you complete the exercise. During some sections, you will be asked to write for specified amounts of time. Please try your best to write for the amount of time specified (so, if it asks you to write for 1-2 minutes, please write continuously for at least 60 seconds).

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS 2 During this exercise, you will be presented with a series of pages either providing you with information, or asking you to describe aspects of your personality and experiences. You may proceed through the exercise by clicking the Next button. You can go back to previous pages by clicking Previous. Each time you click Next or Previous, the data you have entered on that page will be saved. You can also save

your data while remaining on the same page by clicking Save. In addition, many of the pages where you are asked to write for longer periods of time will automatically save every minute or so. You may quit the exercise any time by clicking Exit/Home or shutting down your browser. If the current page is a page you have been writing on, remember to click Save before exiting. The text that you entered on previous pages will have already been saved. You can come back to the exercise later, and resume your work. All your previous work will be waiting for you, and will be taken to the last point in the exercise you had completed.

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS 3 On many pages, you will not be able to successfully click Next or Previous unless you have provided a minimum of necessary text. If you do not, you will receive an error message, and the text box in question will be highlighted in red. Text boxes also have a maximum length. Pay attention, as you write, to the numbers above the text boxes. Numbers like [180 / 1000] indicate that you have typed 180 characters out of a maximum allowable of 1000. When you go over the maximum, the numbers above the text box become red. Clicking Next, Previous, or Save will result in an error message and you will not be able to proceed to the Next or Previous page. To resolve this, edit your text until the number of characters is less than or equal to the maximum. These limitations have been established so that you do not get stalled at any point in the process. We do encourage you to write in some detail, however, subject to those limitations. Our research indicates that better results are obtained as the amount written by participants increases. There is a progress bar in the top right portion of the screen, which displays the percentage of the exercise that you have already completed. If you hover over the bar with the mouse, you can see approximately how much time it will still take to complete the exercise. **You may use the Index to jump to any page you have already completed. Clicking the [Index] link will open the index. Clicking it again will close it. Remember to click Save to save any work on the current page before using the index to jump to another page. After you have completed the exercise, you will be taken to a Summary page. You can use that page to email yourself a copy of your writing.

The Ideal Future: Preliminary Notes and Thoughts

In this exercise you will begin to create a version, in writing, of your ideal future. William James, the great American psychologist, once remarked that he did not know what he thought until he had written his thoughts down. When he didn’t know what to write, he wrote about anything that came to mind. Eventually, his ideas became focused and clarified. Brainstorm. Write whatever comes to mind. Don’t worry too much about sentence construction, spelling, or grammar. There will be plenty of time to write polished sentences later. Avoid criticizing what you write. Premature criticism interferes with the creative process.

Imagining Your Ideal Future You will start with some exercises of imagination that will help you warm up to the task of defining your future. These will include 8 questions such as “what could you do better?”, “what would you like to learn about?”, “what habits would you like to improve?”. After briefly answering these 8 questions, you will be asked to write for 15 minutes about your ideal future, without editing or criticism. Let yourself daydream or fantasize. You are trying to put yourself into a state of reverie, which is a form of dream-like thinking that relies heavily on internal imagery. This kind of thinking allows all your different internal states of motivation and emotion to find their voice.It might be best to concentrate on your future three to five years down the road, although you may have reasons to concentrate on a shorter or longer timespan (eighteen months to ten years). 1.1 One Thing You Could Do Better If you could choose only one thing that you could do better, what would it be? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. The first thing that comes to mind is being less reactive. I mean this mostly in conversation with other people. If I could learn to be more patient and respond more thoughtfully, my conversations would have better outcomes. Part of this could be allowing myself to take notes during conversations as an outlet for what I want to say so that I feel “heard” and not scared of forgetting but don’t interupt the other person. Even just a word or two would be good. I don’t want to lose track of what the other person is saying while I’m writing. I guess it would be helpful to have a notepad or pen for writing on napkins or a phone or tablet out during conversations.

1.2. Things to Learn About What would you like to learn more about, in the next six months? Two years? Five years? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. In the next six months, I’d like to learn about AT, dance, various programming topics such as databases, FRP. But most importantly I want to learn about how to live life for a cause, and get on the path to figuring out my crusade. In the next two years, I’d like to learn about meditation because I think that will help me with my goal of less reactivity and more responding. I’d also like to learn about communication and how to inspire and motivate others. In the next five years, it’s difficult to imagine which skills I’d want to learn then. I’ll be 28. If I’m still dating Sarah, we’ll be talking about marriage and kids (if we haven’t done either before then), so I imagine I’ll be wanting to learn about those sorts of domestic things and/or scaling my crusade to areas where I don’t have skills. 1.3. Improve Your Habits What habits would you like to improve? -At school? -At work? With friends and family? -For your health? -With regards to smoking/alcohol/drug use? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. I’ve been doing a great job of improving my habtits at work, including waking up at 7am, going to bed at 11pm, planning my schedule, writing in my journal, releasing podcast episodes, reflecting on my progress, getting advice from mentors and experts, allowing time for all of these important meta tasks, including getting to inbox zero every day. I would like to improve the way I organize my thoughts. Currently they feel a bit scattered. I wonder if this is a tools problem or simply a time problem, in that as my brain is pickled in these ideas and thoughts, it will become easier to organize them over time. With my friends and family, I would like to set up a system where I contact them all more regularly. I have tried in the past but it’s a big project. Will do at some point. For my health, I’m trying to not pleasure or bordeom eat as much. Also, trying to deepen my AT practive. With regards to drinking, I definitely don’t like it that much and it’s not healthy so I’ve resolved to do it much less. Only when I really want to, similar to Eli.

1.4. Your Social Life in the Future Friends and associates are an important part of a meaningful, productive life. Take a moment to consider your social network. Think about the friends you might want to have, and the connections you might want to make. It is perfectly reasonable to choose friends and associates who are good for you. Describe your ideal social life. Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. The obvious one is that I really would like to be friends with Docks. Let me write a note to text him in my inbox. My social life at the moment is pretty great. I love seeing at lot of Jonathan. We are on the same wave length at the moment. Eric is also a great friend for me. Zach Valenti is good but I do have trouble because I “make him wrong” some of the time. 1.5. Your Leisure Activity in the Future Take a moment to consider the activities you would like to pursue outside of obligations such as work, family and school. The activities you choose should be worthwhile and personally meaningful. Without a plan, people often default to whatever is easiest, such as television watching, and waste their private time. If you waste 4 hours a day, which is not uncommon, then you are wasting 1400 hours a year. That is equivalent to 35 40-hour work weeks, which is almost as much as the typical individual spends at his or her job every year. If your time is worth $25 per hour, then you are wasting time worth $35,000 per year. Over a 50-year period, that is $1.8 million dollars, not counting interest or any increase in the value of your time as you develop. Describe what your leisure life would be like, if it was set up to be genuinely productive and enjoyable. Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. I definitely like dance. I also enjoy running and working out in general. I joined ClassPass this morning and am going to a barre class with Sarah in a few hours. I also love to read. I do enjoy a bit of television here and there, and it does relax me before bed. I also really love brunch. I think at some point I could see myself picking up a musical instrument but let’s start with dance first. Also I could see myself picking up drawing, because it’s a way to train your brain to see in a different way. 1.6. Your Family Life in the Future Take a moment to consider your home and family life. Peaceful, harmonious family life provides people with a sense

of belonging, support for their ambitions, and reciprocal purpose. Describe what your ideal family would be like. You can write about your parents and siblings, or about your plans for your own partner, or about your children, if any – or about all of these. What kind of partner would be good for you? How could you improve your relationship with your parents or siblings? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. At this very moment, my family life is pretty ideal. I am totally in love with my partner Sarah, we see each other throughout the day, and my relationship to each of my parents and siblings is really strong and enjoyable. It’s difficult to think about whether I want kids or not as some point from my current perspective. Clearly right now I wouldn’t want them. I think I might feel differently after I choose my crusade and make some sort of signifiant progress towards it. Also it might feel more possible and exciting when I’m more finacially secure. 1.7. Your Career in the Future Much of what people find engaging in life is related to their careers. A good career provides security, status, interest, and the possibility of contributing to the community. Take a moment to consider your school or work careers, or both. Where do you want to be in six months? Two years? Five years? Why? What are you trying to accomplish? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on. In the next six to twelve months, I’d like to make progress on 1) my crusade or 2) a finacial way to support myself while not losing much flexibility. In the next two years, I’d like to have a corpus of work that I am proud of and that earns me a small amount of acclaim within my community. In the next five years, I’d love to have my crusade nailed down and have begun working on it in earnest. Potentially this will look like starting a research lab, or starting a company or startup, or creating a Kickstarter, or getting a job at a think tank or lab that I admire. 1.8. Qualities You Admire People you automatically admire have qualities that you would like to possess or imitate. Identifying those qualities can help you determine who it is that you want to be. Take a moment to think about the two or three people you most admire. Who are they? Which qualities do they possess that you wish you had? Think and write for at least two minutes, then move on.

I admire Docks, Bret Victor, Juan Benet, and Elon Musk. What all of these people have in common is strong principles and priorities that they live by in such a way that the people around them and the broader world is effected by them. It’s really the combination of integrity and vision.

The Ideal Future: Complete Summary Now you have written briefly about your future, and have had some time to consider more specific issues. This step gives you the chance to integrate all the things that you have just thought and wrote about. Close your eyes. Daydream, if you can, and imagine your ideal future: -Who do you want to be? What do you want to do? -Where do you want to end up? -Why do you want these things? -How do you plan to achieve your goals? -When will you put your plans into action? -Write about the ideal future that you have just imagined for 15 minutes. **Write continuously and try not to stop while you are writing. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar. You will have an opportunity to fix your mistakes later. Dream while you write, and don’t stop. Write at least until the 15 minutes have passed. Be ambitious. Imagine a life that you would regard as honourable, exciting, productive, creative and decent. Remember, you are writing only for yourself. Choose goals that you want to pursue for your own private reasons, not because someone else thinks that those goals are important. You don’t want to live someone else’s life. Include your deepest thoughts and feelings about all your personal goals. There are a few things on my mind here. First of all, I want to live a conscious life. That means that I will set aside plenty of time on my calendar for reflection time (like this) so that I can meditate on my priorities and goals, which will in turn help me persue them better. In this way I am seeing that integrity and vision are interrelated. If you have integrity without vision you don’t really have integrity because you have no basis for making comitments. If you have vision without integrity, you are just an idle dreamer. If you have both, you are a force of nature. That’s what I want to be. I want people to ask how can one person get so much done? and how can one person have it all?and be really be confused, because they don’t see that the secret is priorities and then living them. I want my reflections on the impact of my past work on the world to immediately bring a smile to my face. I want to be able to recall specific people and problems that my work has ammelieorated. I want to jump out of bed each morning and collapse into bed each night fufilled.

I want my relationships with my partner and close family to be empowered. I want to be a light in their lives and a rock and resource for them through their difficulties. I want the lives of everyone I touch, from the waiter a resturant to a person I meet over coffee to my best friends, to be lighter for my prescense. I want an inner calm and peace. I want confience in myself so that when my reptile brain feels like it’s being attacked, I can calm it down quickly so that I can respond and not react. I want to live a model life and share it publicly so that others can read my progress and model themselves after me. The medium of my life is the message and I want to make that message as detailed as possible. I plan to achieve my goals through a fairly straightforward proccess of: 1) reflecting on anxieties, problems, wants 2) coming up with various plans for each of these things 3) engaging with friends and mentors for advice on these things and my proposed solutions 4) put the best solutions into action 5) repeat This proccess works at a micro level for little issues I have with my mom on a given day and macro issues about my goals for my entire life. I want to produce thoughts. I want to inspire others. I want to literally change the way others brains work by adding in different analogies and patterns of thought. I want to empower people. I want children to grow up in love with their brains and be thankful to me for getting them there, just like I am thankful to Seymour. Wait a second: thankful for brain. Love thy brain. Is that my crusade. I want people to fall in love with their brains. That really sounds like it could be. Here’s where my head is at: before I found the Alexander Technique, I hated my body. Not from a body image perspective but from a back and hand RPI pain perspective. It always hurt and so I subconsciously rejected it and tried to distract myself from it and its signals. I daydreamed about uploading my consciousness to the cloud so I could be free of all my bodily pains. I worry that many people feel the same way about their brains, including:   

having a fixed mindset about their intellegence, habits, or personality thinking that they are “bad at math” or some other subject feeling disempowered to learn new things because of poor performance in school

  

feeling disempowered to think for themselves feeling disempowered to solve their own problems hating yourself for things you have done or continue to do and can’t stop (addictions)

We all have various forms of self-loathing. One of my main insights is that loving your thinking brian is so wonderful. It is so empowering. So freeing. So powerful. Wait a second. I just had another thought. What about tools? If I think about how I fell in love with my brain, it was always around different technologies that augmented it, be it a note-taking strategy, LOGO, or learning to leverage a full piece of paper for scrap work. Holy shit. One of my main things is: you cannot seperate man from his tools. A human literally is the tool-making animal. Augmented humans. That was Douglas Engelbart. Mine is so similar. But it’s a bit more: humans = ape + tools. That’s really what I’m trying to fight for. We are our tools. That’s why tools are so important. They mean everything. That’s why important ideas are so important: they are tools. Words, the idea of human rights, analogies: these are all tools to think with as much as a google doc or a piece of code. HOLY crap humans = ape + tools. Is that my c...